Why use Index.html rather than Default.html to recognise the homepage?

Question

Hi,

Can anyone give me some reasons. I cant think of anything else but the fact its seen as being the industry standard.

Please help!

Thanks in advance!

J

Answer 1

The reason is that all browser are set to look for that index first. The reason for that reason, of course, is that they did that from day 1 and it works so why change.



The reasoning behind the reason for that reason is that it would be a hell of a hassle to try to change it now.



But yes, Default.html or Fred.html or even rumplestiltskin.html would be perfectly fine except what a hassle for the engineers..:-)

Answer 2

Chas, browsers never look for index or default, they look for whatever is configured on the webserver (like Apache DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm default.htm index.php ). If it would be browsers choice, you as a host would not be able to control and that would not be a nice thing. you control what will be the index page thorugh the webserver configuration both Windows and Linux machines.



As far as I remember it will be 1995 that linux machines had index as default and windows went with default. But again it is just a naming and nowadays I think most times it is used index even on Win machines.

Answer 3

Back in the day, the first page (home page) of a site was mainly used to list the content of the site, like an index. Hence the name.

Answer 4

you can use any ... its up to you.

default or index this would be your landing page..

Microsoft uses default in its application development like Visual studio and front page too (i guess) . I use VS.

While Dreamweaver uses index. hope you will understand it.

Answer 5

Just use index.html, i dont know if you can use anything else